Another season of American Horror Story has come to an end. This year’s Freakshow continues a steady decline that began last season. The show still has its quirks, its moments that makes it fun, trashy television but this year felt slightly neutered. Whether this was through the budget or just storytelling is hard to tell. The season started off promising enough with Sarah Paulson playing the two-headed Bette/ Dot and John Carroll Lynch (who I will always see as Drew Carey’s cross-dressing brother from The Drew Carey Show) as the bed-wettingly scary Twisty the Clown. This year had the potential to be something truly dark and deserving of the “horror” moniker. Even the musical number that began this season (David Bowie’s “Life on Mars”) was fun and didn’t seem as forced as last year’s weird Stevie Nicks music video. Somewhere between that enticing start and this week’s finale the show lost its way.

Where last season people said the show lacked any real consequences, once multiple characters have come back from the dead it is hard to care about what happens to them, this season seemed to over correct by killing someone every episode. The problem though was the writers never took the time to let us like any of these people before they killed them off. Generally the characters this season were by and large terrible people. Just about everyone either murdered or aided in the murder of someone over the course of the show but no one ever showed any remorse or regret over it. When those same people meet a bloody, violent death it’s hard to feel sorry for them.

A few times we’re given people to feel bad for but here again, they aren’t fleshed out, they’re two-dimensional props and we are being forced to care about them. Two examples of this were Meep “the geek” and Ma Petite, the “worlds smallest woman.” We were supposed to care about these two because they’re weak, they’re cute, and they … well we never really knew anything else about them so that’s it. The show used their characters as superficially and selfishly as a freak show would. Maybe if we had gotten some real back story or some more interaction it would be easier to care for them instead of because we’re told to do so. While we weren’t getting background on characters who were important to the plot, the writers were busy tying past seasons into this one. For the first time this year we have confirmation that all the seasons take place in the same world. One of the Nuns from Asylum came and we see how Pepper the pinhead ended up there. So now that we’ve had “Pepper Begins,” an Avengers-style crossover must be next right? But really unless there are further plans to expand on this, what was the point other than to confuse people while taking important time away that they could use to flesh out their characters?

It wasn’t just the lack of connection to characters that took away this year; the effects work was all over the place. The “twins” Dot and Bette were especially hit and miss, while having a two-headed character is going to be challenging, and to their credit many different methods were employed to achieve it, the results were mixed. Moments where they shot the heads separately juxtaposing their personalities to one another started off as clever, even entertaining, but there’s only so many scenes you can have ping ponging between shots of two heads coming from the same torso before it gets tired. Scenes that used CG and practical effects went from the completely convincing to laughably bad, more than once a shot from behind clearly showed one head bobbling on a rubbery neck.

On a more positive note there were some great visuals this season. The freak show itself came off like a Tim Burton fever dream and the opening credits sequence this season might be the creepiest yet. The aforementioned Twisty was a terrifying clown design and whenever he was on screen he stole the show. The only negative was how quickly they resolved his story. It would have been nice to have him throughout the season. Then there is Dandy the rich psycho. He was basically a murderous seersucker wearing  version of Blaine from Ryan Murphy’s other show “Glee.” If any one character had to be labeled this season’s “Big Bad” it would probably be him. He got to be the creepy momma’s boy, a psychotic apprentice, as well as a spoiled brat. Outside of freak show owner Elsa Mars, Dandy is probably the character we spend the most time with and learn the most about this season. It would be surprising if Finn Wittrock, who plays Dandy, doesn’t become one of their recurring actors in future seasons after such a strong performance this year.

So many good ingredients make it such a shame that the end product was so lacking. A fantastic cast, great guest stars, plus a weird twisted setting but there just wasn’t enough focus to have things come together. As quickly as plotlines and characters were introduced another plot is wrapped up neatly and another character is killed. One week the local townsfolk hate the freaks, the next week they cheer one as a hero, but wait! The week after that they hate the freaks again. Last season might have been a little too generous on resurrections but it still had fleshed out characters who felt like real, though out there, people.

Seasons one and two of American horror Story were fantastic,  season three was pretty damned good, and now season four is just ok. Hopefully next year creators Falchuk and Murphy can stop or reverse the drop in quality or else American Horror Story will end up like their other collaborations Nip/Tuck and Glee, shows that peaked early but then dragged on until they became parodies of themselves. It’s still fun to watch, which is more than can be said of a lot of shows, but where it used to be well written trashy fun it’s just plain trashy fun now. With the format of a new story and set of characters every year, a turnaround is easy to manage. Let’s just hope they can make a return to form next year.

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Let’s face it: if you liked the first season of American Horror Story, then continued to enjoy the second season … I dunno who I’m talking to. Unless you’re Chuck. Sorry, Chuck. I love you, man, but last season was pretty damned awful, confusing and just downright … bad. It was a far cry from the first self-contained season of the series, which itself wasn’t exactly perfection. However, that first season was good enough to make me look forward to the next which, as I said, fell flat.

This season of American Horror Story takes on yet another different “horror” to follow, this time with witches (which some people think is an overdone subject these days — it’s not like it’s zombies!) Many people were pretty excited for the addition of Kathy Bates to the cast, who we’ve already come to know on the show as being — presumably — a witch, with one hell of a serious past. So far her casting has proven to be right on the mark.

Setting up the flashbacks to long-ago New Orleans — and seeing Bates’ Madame Delphine LaLaurie’s sadistic rituals for eternal youth — was right away a step in the right direction as well. True to the show’s form were cringe-worthy scenes of awfully tortured men, uncomfortable-to-behold (to say the least) gang rape, and blood, blood everywhere — even being painted on faces with a shaving mug and brush. What’s different, though, is how the story is unfolding. Unlike the past two seasons, we seem to be falling right in line with following this group of “special” girls, instead of following different ongoing story lines. That could certainly change as the series continues, but the setup definitely had a different feel to it — it almost felt like Hogwarts for witches … except with torturing and rape and stuff.

Some early predictions I have, though nothing very insightful: Kyle Spencer (Evan Peters) will return due to one of the witches’ being able to bring back the dead (according to IMDb, he’s back later in the season, so the question isn’t “if” it’s “how.”) Also, Zoe Benson (Taissa Farmiga) will likely become a “Supreme” witch at some point, likely by figuring out that every which has this capability, just that they need to know how to release it all. Maybe all the witches have the ability to gain all the powers.

I’m not sure if this season technically makes up for last season, but it’s so far an improvement. If I had one gripe about it, it’d be this: why the hell did Zoe resort to jerking off and fucking a guy in his deathbed to exact her revenge, when holding a pillow over his head or, heck, zipping a knife across his throat would’ve done just fine? I get that it makes his death painful and mysterious to investigators, but … she has to fuck the guy to do it!

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As strange and unique as last season’s American Horror Story was, I dug it. I fully admired the uniqueness of the show — at least to anything else on television last year — and the times it stepped outside any sort of comfort zone to try and make us feel … uncomfortable. When I heard the second season was going to completely start a new story from scratch, I criticized it as a possibly dumb — albeit brave — move; it would be like starting a completely new show, and possibly confuse old fans not aware of the non-continuing storyline from the first season. However, it didn’t stop me from wanting to tune in, so I did.

What originally started off a a promising new story to tell in the AHS-verse turned out to be a jumbled mess of evil where I’m still not sure what the overall plot was supposed to be.

We started out with the mystery of Bloody Face, which quickly brought us to aliens, an insane asylum run by insane people, mysterious “people” in the woods, an angel of death, mad doctors, rape, torture, murders, suicides. As I said, it was a jumbled mess.

As the final scene of the finale came to a close, I couldn’t help but think there was supposed to be a bigger message at play with this season. “Look evil in the face, and it will look right back at you.” Close in on Sister Jude’s eyes. Think back to what had transpired all this season. What was it all about, really? The sorry state of mental health care in our country? OK, I can see where … aliens fit into that … And an  old Nazi doctor incinerating himself with a dead nun. …

Here’s to hoping next season of American Horror Story picks a theme that’s not so all-over-the-place and establishes a true horror story that makes sense from beginning to end. Then again, is horror every really supposed to make sense?

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After the success of the first season of American Horror Story — and the then announcement of FX’s pickup of the show for a second season — we learned that not only was the new season going to be an entirely new locale, time period and story altogether, but a good number of the cast would transition over as well. If that wasn’t confusing enough, the cast would be playing entirely different roles than they had in the first season. In a previous post, I brought up the possibility that this unusual change would confuse and anger fans, since a good many of those viewers aren’t keeping up with fine blogs such as this one, to learn of these complete story changes; that theory remains to be seen, now that the season’s kicked off. It could just be that everyone who cares about this show is keeping up with TV websites, guides and watching promos — who knows?

I compared this series to The Twilight Zone, but instead of each episode being self-contained, it’s each season. And like Twilight Zone, there were some actors who’d played different roles in subsequent episodes. This season takes things another step in that direction by not merely continuing the theme of hauntings and ghosts, and instead brings a bit of sci-fi into the mix. There’s blood, gore, murders and mayhem and all-around creepiness, but now there’s a new twist: aliens.

Let’s assume that the visions Kit Walker witnessed were real and not vivid hallucinations. Anyone who’s somewhat familiar with alien abduction stories and movies knows the telltale signs seen there; that spells out UFOs and aliens. Generally one might not necessarily consider an alien-themed show or movie to be of the horror genre; I’d be more apt to consider it science fiction first and foremost, in fact. Come to think of it, though, there aren’t very many alien movies that aren’t “horror” at their foundations, unless they’re right-out comedies or children’s flicks. I applaud the writers of this series for not merely continuing on with the same flavor of what some consider horror, and bringing us something that is going to be something much, much different. Again, this all assumes Kit wasn’t going simply going nuts. It’s possible the answer could be that Kit dreamed up the bright lights, noise, floating and probing from reading old sci-fi rags of the day, but I don’t want to believe that.

So far it appears Briarcliff may be somehow behind the things Kit witnessed, and might be keeping these aliens at bay with regular body part feedings in the woods. Now the promo posters of all-in-white nuns with big, all-black eyes makes sense: they look like freakin’ aliens! Will we find out that a majority of the Briarcliff residents are there because they, too, saw bright lights and floated to the ceiling?

Regardless of whether or not this new season will confuse or upset fans of last season, it’s off to an interesting start. It’ll actually be interesting to see if people who didn’t watch last season decide to hop into this one, since there’s nothing at all to catch up on. Which group do you fall into?

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